New Leica 50mm LHSA

The new Leica APO-ASPH. LHSA and the Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8G (not to scale)

Leica has introduced a truly beautiful new lens. It's a commemorative variant of the current APO-ASPH 50mm Summicron, the modern iteration of Leica's most famous lens. Or the lens that made it famous, as you wish. It commemorates the 50th anniversary of the LHSA, an organization which did not change its initials even though it did change its name—the initials originally stood for Leica Historical Society of America and the organization is currently called The International Leica Society. It is "an independent, nonprofit organization [and a rich fellowship of friendships —Ed.] dedicated to all aspects of the Leica camera, including photography, research, history, documentation and collecting." Quite worthy of honoring.

(Somebody should start a Society of Friends of Fuji—SoFoF. All it would need would be a website, an occasional e-newsletter, some gateway ritual signifying membership, and a forum.)

To honor the occasion, Leica itself has issued the Leica APO-Summicron-M 50mm ƒ/2 ASPH 'LHSA,' a lens that looks old but is optically the same as the latest version. Absolutely beautiful. There it is, pictured, at the top left, and here it is at the Leica website, and here it is at B&H.

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[Reality Check section—skip if you are a staunch defender of Leica.] It does however cost $9,595. That makes it exactly 43.2268 times better than the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8G, from a company that doesn't know how to make lenses, except that the APO-Summicron ASPH. LHSA is slightly slower and has the advantages of not being autofocus.

(I'm being sarcastic, but actually the speed difference is not significant. For all practical purposes, ƒ/1.7 and ƒ/1.8 are effectively the same as ƒ/2...ƒ/1.8 is only 1/3rd of a stop from ƒ/2 and not only do many camera/lens systems not achieve a tolerance greater than about 1/6th of a stop anyway, but 1/3 stop differences are not visible or technically significant in all but the most specialized situations. It's a good rule of thumb to stick with differences of a full stop or more when upgrading to faster lenses, or in choosing between competing options. I wouldn't think twice about the difference between ƒ/2 and ƒ/1.8. It really doesn't matter.)

This reminds me of a couple of memories, as many things do now that I am a Photosaurus. One, a gray Winter day standing at the counter at Helix Camera in Chicago, up on the second floor of its location overlooking the Eisenhower Expressway, talking to a bored, cynical, fatalistic counterman (I liked camera store countermen, and miss 'em) while fondling some Leica equipment. He said that although it had that reputation, most Leica stuff wasn't really so very expensive, because for the most part it only cost 50% more than the best Nikon equipment. The opinion he expressed at the time was that as long as the cost of Leica gear was "within sight" of the cost of Nikon gear, "they're still all right." "You pay a premium for the build quality," he opined.

The other memory is that once in the late 1990s I decided to run a test to see if Leicaphiles could actually recognize pictures taken with Leica lenses. I meant to make ten prints with a variety of lenses, three of them Leica lenses, and see if Leica people could pick out the Leica ones. But I ended up not following through (gee, there's something that's not typical of me—Big Plans Man, Pie in the Sky man, that's Mike), and I only made, I think, five or six. Two of them were more or less the same picture, one made with the "tabbed" 50mm Summicron (from John Hicks), 1979–1994, designed by Walter Mandler, which I think were going for about $600 and change at the time, and the other made with an Olympus 50mm ƒ/1.8 OM Zuiko, which I scored used for ten bucks. The pictures were of my son and his friend from across the street, taken outside our back door at ƒ/5.6. They were black-and-white 11x14s printed by me in my basement. I showed the pictures to three local photo friends, none of whom could tell which lens was which. Then I sent them to an online Leica fan I knew. Instead of picking one or the other, he sent me a written objection that was long and contentious. The test was not fair, he said, because I was using the wrong film (Tri-X), and not making the enlargements big enough. He demanded that to secure his participation in the trial, I had to agree to use Kodachrome, shoot only on a tripod, and make focus brackets with the M6 because rangefinder focusing was sometimes not exactly accurate. He had a long section about how I could not be fair about my trial prints because I started with the assumption that people could not always tell when a picture was taken with a Leica lens...when, in fact, he could do so...if the conditions were "fair."

I realized that his reaction was likely to be typical, or not atypical, so I got discouraged and gave up.

The person who really had a reaction to those photos was Zander's friend's mother. In the picture, the kid, Sean, who must have been about eight at the time, had a thick mop of shaggy blond hair, including bangs that came very close to blinding him. From the pupils up he resembled a blond sheepdog. He was a friendly kid with a nice smile and I thought the picture was a nice candid of the two boys, so I sent one of the test prints home with him, thinking his parents might like to have it.

The next day Sean showed up at our house after school with about as emphatic a haircut as I've ever seen—a crew cut so close to the skull that his remaining hair was just a shimmer on his head. His mother's critical reaction to the photograph was thus very clear indeed! It was "my kid sure needs a haircut." I took an "after" picture, and somewhere I have those two prints to "commemorate" his mom's critical response to my work.

Before I leave the Reality Check behind, I wanted to also mention that the Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm ƒ/1.8 ZA is also a pretty good lens, even if you could only buy two of them for just the difference in price between the new 50mm LHSA and the optically identical regular plain old everyday nuthin' special Leica 50mm APO-ASPH. I'll bet a Sony Zeiss 55mm on an A7RIII could give the 50mm APO-ASPH on an M10 a run for its money. But that's just guessing. [/Reality Check]

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Sure would be nice to own both to find out, at leisure, over time. In any event, cost efficiency is not the way to look at this commemorative. The last small increments of quality at the extremes are admittedly expensive, rarity and collectability counts and so does desirability, and there is no question that the Leica 50mm APO-Summicron ASPH., in whichever livery, is one of the very finest 50mm lenses it's possible to own. You wouldn't be putting a foot wrong if you did. It would probably hold its monetary value pretty well, but mostly it would be an investment in geeky happiness that I bet wouldn't dim very much over years of service.

Leica's still good that way.

Mike

[An aside: I really am writing too long these days. I need to stop that. And now, boy, do these dogs need to go out.]

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

toto: "The Leica is 44.2268 times as expensive as, or 43.2268 times more expensive than, the Nikon. And that does not mean that the Nikon is 44.2268 times (or even 43.2268 times) cheaper than the Leica!"

Innumerate Mike replies: I defer to your superior arithmetic!

Rodolfo Canet: "Cannot believe it, Mike! Half the Internet is talking about the $12,800 new Noctilux 75mm ƒ/1.25 and you tell us about a measly $9,895 'Cron.... You can see it here."

Mike replies: I'm a contrarian.

Albert Macfarlane: "I'm sorry you abandoned the attempt to have a blind evaluation of the output from Leica lenses, as this would have been one of the few experiments to have the end result of photographic gear evaluated by human eyesight and opinion. Many of us suspect that this kind of study would unfortunately fail to find the differences we delight to speculate about in gear heavy blogs. One good experiment I remember was published by David Pogue some ten years ago when he showed that average people did not select prints as better when made from higher pixel cameras. The response to this finding was astonishing, and his methods were heavily criticized."

Mike replies: I like those kinds of empirical experiments, and have conducted several over the years. Going further back, I recall an experiment Burt Keppler wrote about in Modern Photography magazine (might have been Pop, but I think it was Modern), where he compared an equivalent Leica 50mm to a Pentax SMC Takumar 50mm ƒ/1.4. No one could tell the difference there either, but that was possibly because the Takumar is so good, rather than implying that the Leica isn't. Burt wrote The Pentax Way, so he was a bit "invested" in Pentax.

The Pogue article is excellent and intriguing.

cdembrey: "About Leica lenses. If it wasn't designed by Berek, it doesn't fit my personal minimalist/surrealist vision. Erwin Puts said: 'The smooth and pleasant shapes and tones that can be recorded with the Berek lenses are part of the Leica heritage. The Bauhaus generation was focussed on the "New Vision" and the grand masters of the snapshot were concerned with the surrealistic juxtaposition of image elements.' Erwin Puts, 'Three generations of optical design: Berek, Mandler, Kolsch' is worth reading."

Mike replies: It certainly is, but, as is often the case with Erwin Puts, sometimes it teases more than it conveys! For instance the sentences, "The innovations (zoomlenses) however were snatched away from Leitz by the Japanese companies," and "It is a strange coincidence that the famous designers are of German origin, like Bertele and Rudolph and Berek, but all serious optical design programs are American." There is a great deal more that he could say about those two tidbits, as well as other seemingly offhand comments!

psu: "On the upside it makes the new CL look cheap."

robert e (partial comment): "For what it's worth, I suspect that the Summicron may be 43 times more likely to survive a drop from a shoulder bag to the pavement than the Nikkor...."

Comments

[Wolfgang Lonien]

Mike> "I really am writing too long these days. I need to stop that."

- no, please don't.

And as much as these Leica lenses fascinate me, I'm pretty happy with the PL 25mm/1.4 for µ43rds. And I would be equally happy with that Zeiss on one of the Sonys, I bet. Or maybe even with that 1.8 G Nikkor on a D610 (or a D750 with its tilting display).

[John Krill]

I once owned a Leica M3. Still do but I damaged it beyond repair. Truthfully once was more than enough.

I didn't listen to my own advice. Lens selection first. I bought the Leica with a 50 something. Really needed a 35 something for street work. Instead I used my Nikon with my trusty 28.

In short always know what lenses you require before selecting the camera.

I did get a lot of ooos and aaaas while carrying the Leica. Funny thing I now get the same response carrying my Fujifilm XPro-1. And, yes, it has the 23 f2.

PS: I've completely forgotten why I wanted to write this comment. I remember, why so many posts about Leica? Are there really that many Leica owners out there or are the posts written for the dreamers? :)

[Steve Justad]

F1.8 and 1.6 are third stop numbers. F1.7 is a half stop number.

[Typos nevre rest....Fixed now. Thanks Steve.

BTW, "F1.7" isn't standard...in the words of Wikipedia, "The f-number is commonly indicated using a hooked f with the format f/N, where N is the f-number." The minuscule hooked f is the symbol for focal length. --Mike]

[Gordon Lewis]

>>Once in the late 1990s I decided to run a test to see if Leicaphiles could actually recognize pictures taken with Leica lenses.<<

I did the same once, at roughly the same time, and with Kodachrome 64 rather than Tri-X. I shot with a 50mm Summicron on a Leica M6 and a 50mm f/1.4 Canon EF on an EOS 1n. I shot the same scenes with the same framing and exposure with both cameras, one immediately after the other. The reactions of my Leicaphile friends fell into one of three groups:

1. Those who thought they could see a difference, but in fact could not.
2. Those who contested my methodology.
3. These who gave me a sly smile and said, "So what if there's no visible difference? That's not why I shoot with a Leica."

The truth of the matter was that I didn't really care what they thought; I wanted to see for myself, which I did. I won't say what conclusion I came to because, frankly, what difference would it make if the results with a Leica lens was "better" if said lens was too expensive to afford anyway?

[cdembrey]

Mike said: I really am writing too long these days. This free online word counter https://wordcounttools.com/ may be useful.

Word Count Tools said: Todays post is 1273 words, 6947 characters. Readability level: 11-12th grade student. The count started at Leica has introduced ... and ended at ... boy, do these dogs need to go out.]

I tend to write un-edited stream-of-conscience, sorta like I speak. Filled with two-bit words and 1950-60s SoCal slang. Therefore I spend a lot of time editing my writing. wordcounttools should help me edit and maybe help me lower the readability level.

About Leica lenses. If it wasn't designed by Berek, it doesn't fit my personal minimalist/surrealist vision. Puts said: The smooth and pleasant shapes and tones that can be recorded with the Berek lenses are part of the Leica heritage. The Bauhaus generation was focussed on the “New Vision” and the grand masters of the snapshot were concerned with the surrealistic juxtaposition of image elements. Erwin Puts Three generations of optical design: Berek, Mandler, Kolsch is worth reading http://www.imx.nl/photo/optics/optics/page93.html

[robert e]

For what it's worth, I suspect that the Summicron may be 43 times more likely to survive a drop from a shoulder bag to pavement than the Nikkor (or 43 times as many such drops). If someone were to send me a reasonable sample size of each lens, I'd be happy to put the conjecture to the test.

[Stan B.]

I believe Modern did a similar test decades ago with a variety of 50mm name brand lenses, and the end results were similar- No one could tell which lens took what photo. I think that, for the most part, the infamous "Leica glow" resides in the pride of ownership.

[Joe B]

Those who can, do.
Those who can, buy a Rolex, those who can't buy a Timex. Both get to where they want to be at the same time. No one asks how they told the time. The person with the Rolex feels different about their timepiece than the person with the Timex. Ego, value, if it makes you feel good, why not?

[

Wait, Timex still exists? I haven't worn a watch in 20 years...my son's generation all have "modern pocketwatches." You ask them what time it is, they take their phones out of their pockets and look. --Mike]

[Peter Wright]

Your discussion of the Leica fan who rejected your tests to see if there was a certain 'look' to Leica lenses, on the grounds of your film choice, tripod use, etc. etc., reminds me of the audiophiles who rejected all tests that can't find any difference between tube amps, or transistor amps, or one kind of CD player or the next. (One of my favourite audiophile test rejections – written up in a magazine – explained that even the "stress" that the test listener would be subject to, would make the difference too difficult to detect!) If that's truly the case, then the differences were too minor to bother with in the first place. Probably applies to lenses as well.

There are however definite differences in rendering between different lenses, and this is not hard to become aware of if you use a given lens a good amount and in different circumstances. To what extent these differences can survive all the other factors from sensor characteristics to post processing, that are called into play in any given picture is a point I wouldn't care to argue.

All that being said, I would LOVE to own that Leica APO-ASPH. LHSA. – so much more interesting for me than the Noctilux 75mm f/1.25 announced yesterday. I'll take mine in the chrome finish you show above. :)

[Oskar Ojala]

My first reaction to seeing this lens was that now one can buy a Leica that looks like a Voigtländer. But it's really a testament to how faithful Voigtländer has been in giving their lenses a classic look and not in a bad way I think.

In this case I will defend Leica a little bit. The 50 APO 'cron is considered a very fine lens and the images certainly look impressive. Making this lens requires a small batch of a custom casing, which isn't cheap, and it looks stylish. Granted, when comparing to the Sony system the Sony will win purely because the far superior resoltion of the sensor, but the 50 APO 'cron is still in the unique position of offering an extremely compact high performance 50.

[Dave in NM]

In my experience, that lens has never failed to please. It’s light and compact, sharp as a tack a couple of stops down from wide open, and the bokeh is pleasant.

I’m talking about Nikkor 50/1.8 of course.

[Joe]

When comparing lenses, or cameras, or cell phone cameras, or sensor sizes, or anything that's supposed to make better pictures, one important factor that I think IS important is to find the shot that lets one example shine and the other disappoint.

An example: it's easy to make iPhone photos that look almost as good as a DSLR photo -- as long as you're not shooting in the dark, or trying to show movement, or have a very high contrast scene, or want a shallow depth of field, or... A landscape on a bright but overcast day will look good shot with almost anything.

Same with a lens. Maybe the difference doesn't show up in a typical snapshot, but under high contrast, one lens might display way too much chromatic aberration. Or maybe one lens is distractingly soft in the corners. Or has a lot of distortion or...

Me, I love to print really big. I just shipped a 26x40" print to a show in Canada. I sympathize with the guy how found Mike's 11x14" prints inadequate for comparison.

And I like shallow depth of field. When I compare lenses, I check to see how sharp each is at the center of the frame. (I don't always need tack-sharp, but it's a hell of a lot easier to soften a sharp image than to sharpen a soft image.)

[Paul Mc Cann]

Re SoFoF
When I were a lad 'fof'was a polite abbreviation we used for F*** off.

I was standing at a bar one night and overheard a man boasting about his expensive watch. An old man beside him asked him for the time and on being told said ' Funny. Thats what my watch says also and it only cost thirty bob ( thirty shillings or £1.50) a risible sum

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

Perhaps the Leica is 40.something x better looking than the Nikkor :)

Or perhaps Leica is hitting up the LHSA club to pay for the next round of R&D, instead of the shareholders.

[misha]

Leica lenses are designed/made in Canada by Raytheon:

https://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/optical_tech/

[Not all of them. Mainly the ones with aspherical elements. And in most cases, enough final assembly and testing is left to be done in Germany to justify the "Made in Germany" label. --Mike]

[R. Edelman]

Aside from the quality of the optics and construction of Leica lenses (I am a fan), there is something else to like, and that is the price of the lenses. It helps to consider that someone will be paying $12,800 for a 75mm lens, or $9895 for a 50mm lens, when I am trying to recover from the guilt of paying $1200 for a Zeiss Loxia! Of course, the wonderful images rendered by the Loxia also help greatly to alleviate the guilt.

[bruce alan greene]

About 15 years ago I went to a camera club meeting where we were doing a show and tell of prints. I think the only time I've been to a camera club!

Anyways... We kind of spread the prints all over the room and I had brought several inkjet prints with me. Mine were all shot on film and scanned, but taken with different cameras.

Someone in the group took a look at my prints and right away picked out two of them and declared .... that they were taken by a Leica. And then he added, or other rangefinder camera. And he was exactly correct. They were taken with a Kodak Retina IIIc in 1975.

How did he know I asked. And he responded that there is a difference in the look of the focus, and out of focus between SLR lenses, which must be mounted far from the film, and rangefinder lenses which do not need to clear a mirror box.

And I believe he's correct. My Canon 50mm f1.8 does look different than my 50mm f2.0 on the Retina IIIc.

In the end, I'm happy I can pass for a leica user with a $100 Kodak!

[William Lewis]

I was at a pawn shop today and fighting the urge to buy either or both a Pentax H1a and Praktica LTL. Had the Praktica been a bit cheaper, I'd have probably bit. Why? A beautiful m42 CZ Jenna 50/2.8 Tessar. The kind they call "Zebra". It would make an insanely good portrait lens on the 2x crop of a m4/3 camera like my Olympus E-P3; the sharpness of the center that melts into the almost buttery "not sharpness" of the edges that has always charactarized the Tessar design.

But not today, alas. That $135 (camera & 3 lenses) was just a bit too much right now. Might as well have been that LHSA lens at that point, for all it matters :D

[Dennis Ng]

Actually Nikon lens is better than Leica lens and that is how it launch its "career" when it was a Canon lens maker and discovered by somebody in People or something like that. But that is 50mm F1.4? May be F1.8 is different.

[Iñaki]

As per usual, pentax (or asahi) did it first. Pity there's no psha (pentax society for historical accuracy). And pity there is a uber rare 43 1.9 m39 mount pancake (real pancake) 1.9. I guess the best way to tell leicaphiles about what a good lens is is to have the 77 1.8 with m39 mount. One of the best lenses ever made according to our humble editor.

Tongue in cheek, that is.

[Doug Chadwick]

Interesting. How does lens high-end hype/value compare to audio high-end hype/value in your opinion?

[Oh, audio completely slams photography in that regard. Far crazier. For a while I was collecting gems from reviews and such, but I'm not organized enough to do that sort of thing and I lost them. One that I particularly liked was in a review of a $70,000 amplifier...it went something like "Inside the glorious casework is a surprising amount of what appears to be empty space, but the designer claims the all-important signal path needs free but protected space around it to avoid electrical-field contamination." I'm paraphrasing wildly but it was something like that. Made me laugh out loud when I first read it. --Mike]

[Miserere]

Given the response to your request from the Leica shooter, I'd say your experiment was a resounding success. If the way to recognise a lens's signature is to shoot it under such constrained conditions that they will never be replicated in real life use, then that lens, for all practical purposes, does not have a signature. End of story as far as I'm concerned.

As for the Pogue experiment, it doesn't surprise me. I've made wonderful poster prints with 6MP images from a 2005-era P&S. Needless to say, even nicer prints from a 10MP 2006-era DSLR, but no non-photographer can tell the difference.